Is 2007 the year of the display format wars? A look at the licensing structures of these formats reveals more

Unfortunately, consumers will be faced a total of
three display standards in 2007 -- and even more in 2008. Along with
HDMI, computers
will start to ship with DisplayPort and the Universal Display
Interface (UDI) this year. UDI is electrically compatible with DVI and HDMI,
but does not carry the same licensing fees as either and has a stripped down
feature set. DisplayPort is not compatible with any existing signaling
format.

High fidelity signaling backers are split into two licensing camps: one supporting the DVI-derivatives (DVI-HDCP, HDMI, UDI) and the other supporting DisplayPort. AMD, Dell, Genesis Microchip,
Hewlett-Packard, Molex, NVIDIA, Philips, Samsung and Tyco Electronics are
supporters of DisplayPort; Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Silicon Image, Thomson and Toshiba compose the
primary backers of HDMI. A significant portion of the DisplayPort supporters
also have interests in HDMI. Earlier last year, several manufacturers including Sapphire
and PowerColor announced HDMI-enabled graphics cards based on ATI GPUs. MSI
also announced HDMI
cards based on NVIDIA GPUs.

When DailyTech asked
why HDMI was taking a long time to appear in PC products, Leslie Chard,
president of HDMI Licensing LLC, said "Right now most manufacturers are
considering the cost of adding HDMI to their graphics products. Since HDMI is
based mainly on DVI signals, the technology is already available in graphics
processors. HDMI is everywhere -- consumer electronics, home entertainment and
now companies are demanding the technology for smaller handhelds. You can't
beat HDMI's cross platform compatibility."Joe Lee, director of marketing for Silicon Image, added "Card
manufacturers now only have to consider ways of grabbing the sound output
through the PCI Express bus and adding the cost of the physical connector. If
card manufacturers can finish writing the special [drivers] needed to grab the
audio, everything would be set. Windows Vista should help drive HDMI
forward."

According to initial reports, DisplayPort was heralded as a royalty-free
technology. As it stands today, DisplayPort is royalty free but is composed with
well over 200 patents. According to VESA, the committee that overlooks over the
DisplayPort standard, the intellectual property (IP) holders are not held fixed
and can and may charge a "reasonable" fee for the technologies used
in DisplayPort.

Chard took a shot at DisplayPort, claiming "These IP holders are free to
charge royalties under RAND [Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory] terms.
Until these IP holders make a public commitment, manufacturers have no idea
what this rate will be. Moreover, additional IP holders may come forward
and charge additional royalties in the future; this is especially true if the
DisplayPort standard ever evolves to incorporate advanced new
technologies."

The largest hurdle DisplayPort faces, besides getting out the door, is
interoperability with other devices. DisplayPort is not compatible with
HDMI, UDI or DVI. The hurdle in jumping from one signaling protocol to
the other is that the DVI-derivative protocols use HDCP, DisplayPort uses DPCP and HDCP.
VESA partners claim they will develop devices that allow HDMI to DisplayPort conversion, though doing so would mitigate DPCP. Lee points out that this is essentially against the whole
principle of a content protection protocol in the first place: if someone can
freely negotiate between multiple or non-existent protocols that aren't under
the same certification umbrella, then why have a certification process at all?

It has not been disclosed yet as to whether or not
DisplayPort implementers may be required to pay royalties for the HDCP and
Display Port Content Protection (DPCP) conversion either.

AMD is expected to launch DisplayPort compatible GPUs later this year with
NVIDIA opting for the standard as well. Early last year, Silicon Image
stated that UDI will
end up replacing both HDMI and DVI standards on the PC when it becomes
available to reduce licensing fees, though it will still be compatible with the
older standards.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

I agree, although you made it obvious you didn't read the Dailytech article by not knowing UDI and DisplayPort were not synonymous.

The chart on the site linked went out of its way to make very similar features between HDMI and DP look bad for HDMI and good for DP. This is not surprising as the site's goal is to promote DP.

I like the fact that VESA is behind DP and it very well may be a better interface in the long run, but it remains that DVI has yet to even enter the mainstream.

VGA and its analog derivatives are by far the most used interfaces for video. Even now with Vista, HDCP, Blu-ray, etc I'd gather that most PC's being sold today are sold with analog VGA interfaces ONLY.

VGA has lasted 20 years and is still a good interface. What the industry needs is another VGA. If that standard is DisplayPort, than I'm all for it, but it will mean that every DVI based standard will merely be a footnote in display standards.

I guess my main gripe with DisplayPort is that I disagree with their main objective. Consumer Electronics devices should NOT use a different interface than Computers.

There happens to be a great many "VGA's" it's just, they were all compatible with similar cables. The Spec of VGA that you use is based on your resolution. VGA refers to a resolution of 640x480, SVGA refers to a resolution of 800x600, XGA is 1024x768 and so on and so forth. The db-15 display port may be 20 years old, but the standards you currently use are not.